No changes to skipped school lunch practice

More than 100 people attend hearing

Apr. 5, 2014

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VINELAND — A two-hour forum to gather feedback on possibly mandating school lunches at Vineland High School may not have achieved more than giving students, staff and parents an opportunity to voice their support the programs available at the school.

The public left Thursday’s meeting with the assurance mandated lunches were not pending for the upcoming school year.

The mandatory school lunch issued surfaced last month when school board president Eugene Medio requested the topic be added to the school board agenda for discussion. However, he postponed the matter, saying he wanted to talk to the high school principals and students to gather front-line feedback.

On Thursday, Medio hosted his own meeting at VHS 11-12 and invited everyone to voice their opinion. More than 100 people showed up, including the bulk of the Vineland High School Marching Band.

Many suggested Medio might be trying to fix a problem that doesn’t exist. After listening to the public input, Superintendent Mary Gruccio said she wasn’t planning to recommend to the school board the current practice be changed.

But Medio explained he was concerned about the health and stress issues that might result from skipping lunch.

“From the very start of preschool, we say how important it is to have a good breakfast and a good lunch,” Medio said. “Then you get to high school and you’re not taking a lunch at all.”

The board president said he wanted to find out if the reasons students were skipping lunch were related to scheduling problems that could be addressed by the administration.

Without any opening statement, Medio opened the forum by inviting someone to be the first person to “start it off.”

Two generations of students, past and present, detailed how they had omitted lunch from their schedules for various reasons. Some did so because they wanted to pursue classes that otherwise would not fit into their schedules, in large part due to mandated classes. Others were packing in courses to bump up grade point averages.

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This year, there are 310 VHS students not taking a daily lunch. Many of them are members of the school’s select choir or marching band. Parental approval is required for a student to withdraw from lunch.

Parents, including Marilyn Beres, spoke of how their children opted to forgo lunch to purse their passions.

Beres based her comments on the district’s mission statement that notes “students are challenged to become active participants in the quest for excellence.”

“If you want to challenge these students in that quest for excellence, why would you make them sit in a lunchroom where they don’t want to be wasting 40-45 minutes of what could instead be valuable, enriching, educational time,” she said.

The school district urges students to be responsible for their decisions, she said.

“How are we going to now justify telling them they can not make choices for themselves, especially when all they want to do is gain more knowledge and enrich their experiences,” Beres said.

There also were reasons given to support the mandatory lunch.

Janis Bokma noted her daughter, Hannah, takes school lunch. She is an athlete with practices scheduled after school.

“As a mother and a nurse, I feel it is important for her to have one 40-minute break a day,” she said.

But continuing to taking the lunch jeopardizes her daughter’s ability to maintain her top class rank and Bokma questioned why students should be forced to sacrifice their lunch to maintain their academic standing.

She also warned the board that allowing students to eat lunches, such as granola bars or peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, in classrooms and corridors increases the risk of a fatal allergic reaction for students with peanut allergies.

Marisa Taormina told Medio that her children, based on their own work ethic, skipped lunch to pursue classes.

“I don’t think we should discourage students who want to be academically aggressive,” she said.

Several times, the public raised the question of why the school lunch issue was brought up at all.

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“Ever since this has come up, I haven’t heard anyone say why this is happening,” said Matt Thomas, a VHS teacher. “If there are board members or administrators who are pushing for this, I think everyone would rather not dance around this and would rather hear from whoever is responsible for it, why?”

Medio explained.

“I’m here to get information,” he said, noting he was speaking for himself and not the school board.

Students, polite and passionate, shared personal accounts of how taking part in arts programs had shaped who they had become and who they hoped to be. Those classes would not have been part of their life had they not skipped lunch.

“It has helped me break out of my shell,” said student Nerys Muller, talking about her participation in the arts.

VHS senior Jonathan Roig, who is headed to Yale University, explained how he balances his high school studies between science and music.

Colleges are not solely looking at grade point averages, he said, they want well-rounded students.

In his admissions essays, Roig said, he wrote about his experiences in the VHS music program, which he was able to pursue by taking electives instead of lunch.

After listening to the students’ accounts, school board vice president Scott English said it may be time for the district to pursue an arts academy to provide more offerings.

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